This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the motivations that key policy documents have put forward as justifications for Sweden's mother-tongue instruction in immigrant and historical minority languages as a multicultural policy that has endured for nearly half a century. The diachronic development of these motivations is analysed in four…

Community language schools have grown to become significant educational language providers worldwide. Schools operate as global grassroot initiatives (Liddicoat and Taylor-Leech [2014]. "Micro Language Planning for Multilingual Education: Agency in Local Contexts." "Current Issues in Language Planning" 15 (3): 237-244.), and…

This article focuses on the similar approaches to, yet different contexts of legal recognition of sign languages in Sweden and Norway. We use examples from sign language documentation (both scientific and popular), legislation that mentions sign language, organization of implementation of sign language acquisition, and public discourse (as…

Exploring multilingualism as a complex, context-related, societal and individual phenomenon, this book centres around perspectives on how multiple languages are made (in)visible within educational settings in the Global North. The authors of each chapter compare and contrast findings across geographical contexts with the goal of understanding the…

What are the material-semiotic relationships between a language policy and a table game activity in a bilingual preschool? Using Actor-Network Theory (ANT), the aim of this article is to explore this question, working with both human and nonhuman aspects of the activity, symmetrically, at the same level. The game playing activity takes place at a…

This article explores linguistic-cultural ideologies and educational policies as they emerge and are negotiated in everyday life in a bilingual school setting located in the geopolitical spaces of Sweden. Taking sociocultural theory and discourse analysis as points of departure, we focus on empirical examples of classroom interaction and locally…

This case study explores the relationship between teachers' language knowledge and their grammar teaching practices within the context of a bilingual school for the deaf in Sweden, a country that has demonstrated success in educating deaf children bilingually in written Swedish and Sweden's signed language. The study's participants were two…

In 1981, Swedish Sign Language gained recognition by the Swedish Parliament as the language of deaf people, a decision that made Sweden the first country in the world to give a sign language the status of a language. Swedish was designated as a second language for deaf people, and the need for bilingualism among them was officially asserted. This…

Drawing on data from eleven preschools in four European countries (Germany, Belgium, Sweden, and the UK), this edited volume explores the progress of preschool children learning English over a period of two years. In the first volume, children's lexical and grammatical comprehension, the quality of L2 input, the effect of immersion on L1…

Drawing on data from eleven preschools in four European countries (Germany, Belgium, Sweden, and the UK), this edited volume explores the progress of preschool children learning English over a period of two years. This edited volume (Volume II) gives details on best practices in bilingual preschools as well as background and training on topics…

A Swedish linguist talks about his work and the role of reading and writing in helping immigrants achieve full bilingualism. (FL)

Due to increasing numbers of immigrants since 1960, especially Finnish children, Sweden began to establish instructional objectives and policies for immigrant children. Stated aims clearly stress that the primary aim in the teaching of immigrant children in Swedish schools is to promote bilingualism. While the short-term aim is to produce…

Swedish research and opinion on bilingualism, language policy, and bilingual education in Sweden is reviewed. The Swedish debate on language planning and bilingual education revolves around two perspectives: structural-functional theory and conflict theory. Swedish research consists primarily of statistical and descriptive studies rather than…

This newsletter discusses a Swedish research project investigating the command immigrant school children living in Sweden have of their native language and of Swedish as a second language. The project's objective is to describe the children's language proficiency and factors promoting or inhibiting it in the classroom. The study is undertaken in…

The document presents major themes from a three-day symposium of immigrant and Swedish parents, teachers, teacher trainers, cultural workers, researchers, and government civil servants which explored the function of the home and parents in an intercultural society. The first three sections outline the relationship of the symposium to a pilot…